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People mean
different things when they talk about cryptography. Children play
with toy ciphers and secret languages. However, these have little to
do with real security and strong encryption. Strong encryption is
the kind of encryption that can be used to protect information of
real value against organized criminals, multinational corporations,
and major governments. Strong encryption used to be only military
business; however, in the information society it has become one of
the central tools for maintaining privacy and confidentiality.
As we move into an information society, the technological
means for global surveillance of millions of individual people are
becoming available to major governments. Cryptography has become one
of the main tools for privacy, trust, access control, electronic
payments, corporate security, and countless other fields.
Cryptography is no longer a military thing that should not
be messed with. It is time to de-mystify cryptography and make full
use of the advantages it provides for the modern society.
In
the following, basic terminology and the main methods of
cryptography are presented. Any opinions and evaluations presented
here are speculative, and neither the authors nor SSH can be held
responsible for their correctness - although every attempt is made
to make sure that this information is as correct and up-to-date as
possible.
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